


bring on the rapture (the afterlife remix)

by evewithanapple



Category: Jesus Christ Superstar - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if he wasn’t omnipresent enough already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bring on the rapture (the afterlife remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).
  * Inspired by [What Do We Do Now?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/384713) by [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett). 



He watches.

There’s not much else to do once you’re dead, he’s discovered. Death is- was- meant to be an escape, a last-ditch parachute away from the mess he’d made in life. But here he is, in the afterlife (or so he supposes; it can’t really be anything else, can it?) and not much has changed. He still stands to the side, watching others make all the wrong decisions, with no hand to hold out or voice to raise in protest. He can’t stop them. He can’t stop anything.

(Then again, given how he ended up here- he doesn’t really have the right, does he?)

No, he thinks, he _does_ have the right, because he’s learned from all this in a way that the others haven’t. Mary is still clinging to the hem of Jesus’s robe, always wide-eyed and wistful, grasping after a Messiah who is formed more of her need than any real truth. Peter is still angry, belligerent, ready to swing out with his fists at the first provocation. Simon is still strung tight with impatience, his enthusiasm for the cause barely dampened by all that’s passed. None of them have learned at all; none of them were truly touched by Jesus’s passing, not the way they ought to have been. He is still the only one who knows, who _sees_. What was the point of all this, if no one would learn from it?

“Well, you certainly haven’t learned humility.”

Judas doesn’t bother to turn his head. “Neither have you.”

“Humility is not a requirement for the son of God.” Jesus sounds mildly amused. Judas doesn’t need to look to know that Jesus is faintly smirking at him, blue eyes intense and piercing as always. Jesus always looks so _knowing_ ; it’s one of the things that drives Judas mad about him, that he always carries this air of knowing more than everyone else in the room.

“Perhaps you simply dislike being shown up.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Judas grumbles. Now that they’re in this nebulous space, it seems that Jesus has acquired the talent of reading minds. As if he wasn’t omnipresent enough already. “We’re both dead, aren’t we? Your knowledge didn’t serve you any better than it did me.”

“I made a decision to die,” Jesus points out. “You only-”

“-killed myself,” Judas retorts. “Is that not a choice, now? You could say you did the same thing; you just handed Pilate the wood and the nails he needed to do it.”

Jesus falls silent. Before them, Pilate writhes on his bed, head in hands. Judas knows- he’s not sure how, but he knows- what’s passing through the governor’s mind. Guilt, but only fleetingly. The world settles again to revolve around Rome, as it always does. Pilate will go on as he did before. Caesar’s legions will go one as they did before. Crucifixes will be raised on Golgotha again, and a new array of criminals will take their place. In a few weeks, no one will remember the Son of God, dramatic though his death throes were.

“You’re wrong.”

Judas snorts. “Prove it.”

Jesus nods towards the disciples, who are still huddled in a circle, wringing their hands. Judas catches his own name amidst their conversations and scoffs. “Them? You trust your immortality to those fools? They scattered easily enough when your fate became clear.”

“As did you,” Jesus says. “Would you have forgotten me, had you lived?”

Judas has no answer to that- no answer that he is willing to admit, at any rate- and his mouth twists in a sneer. “So perhaps one day they will tell their children stories of the prophet they traveled with them they were young and foolish. Bedtime stories do not a monument make.”

“You have too little faith.”

“You had too much,” Judas says, “and look where it got you.”

Among the disciples, Mary is the one who seems the most distressed. Not surprising; she was one of the few who lingered at the cross until the very end. Judas finds himself hating her for it. Must she still hug her faith so tightly, so that there’s no room for anyone else’s devotion to shine? To be sure, she was the sweetest of them all, the most likely to turn the other cheek, the one who petted and pampered Jesus, indulging all his worst impulses. Is fawning what makes a true worshipper these days?

“Better than them,” Jesus says. Annas and Caiphas stand before them, heads bowed together, whispering fervently. Judas doesn’t need to listen in on their conversation to know what’s being said: they’re busy absolving themselves of any blame, reassuring each other that they are among the true righteous.

“Another day, another Messiah,” Annas says, loudly enough for Judas to hear without straining, and he laughs out loud. “How many prophets will they crucify before they recognize their mistake, Jesus?”

“They won’t,” Jesus says.

“Aha! So you admit you failed in your quest to open minds and hearts?” Judas shakes his head. “I never thought I’d see the day. Jesus Christ, admitting his own failures.”

“For all you castigate the others for lacking patience,” Jesus says, “you have little enough of it yourself. Does it occur to you that I need not have turned the head of every man in Jerusalem to have made a change? That if only ten men carry on my message, it will be enough?”

“Funny, then,” Judas retorts, “that you felt the need to ride into the city at the head of a procession and make a scene at the Temple. Why all the dramatics, if you didn’t need to turn heads?”

Jesus sighs. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says, and the implicit condescension in his voice makes Judas’ blood boil. “My father’s ways are not for man to understand.”

“I wonder why He bothers with us, then,” Judas snaps, “if we are so incapable of grasping what He wants from us. Why not leave us to fight it out amongst ourselves, and busy yourself with whatever it is the divine do?"

Judas smiles slightly, inclining his head. "Look," he says.

Judas looks. The disciples have finally moved on from huddling together and whispering about the future; now they're finally taken steps to do something. In fact, they're digginga hole in the ground, scooping up handfuls of earth with their bare hands and depositing them in a pile. Next to them is a shrouded figure lying on the ground, his face uncovered. His face-

"There you are," Jesus says softly. Judas opens his mouth, then closes it, struck speechless for once in his life- or afterlife. "For all you scorn my words, they seem to have made some impact. Forgiveness is still within your grasp."

Judas still says nothing, mesmerized by what he sees before him. As he watches, Mary picks up his corpse- it looks huge next to her tiny frame, far too big a burden for him to carry- and lowers it slowly into the hole they've dug. Simon and Peter kick clods of dirt in on top of it. Their motions are not gentle, but they're not exactly unkind either. When the people he betrayed are saving him from a nameless pauper's grave, it's difficult for Judas to call them unkind.

"I am only one man," he says aloud, speaking slowly, "and a dead one at that. So are you. So they bury us. What difference does it make?"

Jesus smiles. "Not all who are buried are forgotten," he says.

"I don't know what you mean," Judas says, turning back towards the disciples. But when he looks again, Jesus is gone.


End file.
